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Will Stallwood, of Second and South streets, and Dain Saint, of Fifth and Bainbridge streets, are, by their own account, nerds. As video-game enthusiasts during childhood, the two men, now both 27, began programming from an early age.
“I used to play video games for money and I used to make a lot of money doing it,” Stallwood said. “There was this game called ‘Quake,’ the first first-person shooters ever created. And there were these little scripts you could write so you could, say, make your weapon switch a lot faster. And if your weapon switched a lot faster, you had a much better edge playing the game. So you had to know how these games worked as well as playing them.”
Stallwood and Saint met in their early 20s. A few years later, they founded Cipher Prime, a small game studio specializing in music games based out of a Seventh-and-Christian-streets office in 2008.
“I wanted it to be an interactive media company, which is sort of what I had been doing at the time, high-end Flash and design. I wanted to take those skills and make more than no money doing it,” Saint said. “Will, he had been in Philadelphia forever and I had left the area for four or five years. I didn’t have any contacts, especially not in the industry and Will knows everyone.
“He was already in the industry, getting us work immediately and I could concentrate on the day-to-day and production. It was a really good fit for us in the beginning.”
They spent some time as an interactive media company, building website add-ons such as virtual tours of new buildings. In an effort to showcase their skills they built a small demo, which was a browser game they dubbed “Auditorium.”
“We had no idea when we put it online,” Saint said of its eventual success. “The moment we realized we had something fantastic was Thanksgiving of that year. We released the demo the first week of November. The site [jayisgames.com], the largest casual-game site on the Internet, ran a review. Their traffic was fantastic, it was so much traffic it crashed the server. Then we got 2,000 hits on Thanksgiving.”
“Basically you can go on there and play a really interesting game,” Stallwood added about their debut game, which won many awards and earned one title of Second-Best Browser Game of All Time. “It doesn’t have instructions, you are playing around and every level can be solved multiple ways.”
Since their initial serendipitous success that is also available on iPhone, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, the interactive media company fully transitioned to a game studio with multiple music-based offerings. At younger than four years old, the small company, which is working on its fourth game, “Splice,” is still finding its footing.
“Instead of going through a publisher, we’re going out and we have to do a lot of stuff ourselves now,” Stallwood said. “It’s all totally new for us. It’s not the easiest thing in the world we’ve realized. It’s going to be an interesting year for us.
“We decided it’s time to jump in the deep end and learn some new tricks.”
Saint grew up in multiple New Jersey towns while Stallwood, who hails from South Jersey, moved to the city to attend The Art Institute of Philadelphia, where he studied design and multimedia design.
“I went to college in Philly and fell in love with the place and never left,” Stallwood, who began working for advertising agencies upon graduation, said. “I was doing video ads and Flash ads … all that technology. Eventually I didn’t want to be evil anymore.”
At the end of high school, Saint headed to Boston to attend Northeastern University, where he studied mechanical engineering. He connected through a mutual friend with Stallwood.
“One of my buddies went to the Art Institute and we were friends from high school,” Saint said. “They ended up hanging out and I became friends through that with Will.”
Saint’s passion, which he now gets to do on a daily basis, was always a hobby.
“We’re both kind of Philly people. We both like doing things for the sake of doing them, so sometimes writing code doesn’t have a purpose other than to do a cool effect,” Saint said.
The two connected over business when they were both fed up with the corporate world and the shortsightedness of their employers. Saint filed paperwork for the company and a couple days later Stallwood called him with the same idea.
“The interesting thing is Dain and I have both been programming since we were kids. Dain’s a musician and I’m an artist, well we’ll say a designer — a failed artist,” Stallwood said. “We have this really hefty passion for these two things individually and a passion and appreciation for each other’s work.”
Though never formally trained, Saint has taught himself proficiency on multiple instruments, and the two combine these loves, along with autonomy, in their business venture.
“I didn’t have friends growing up, so to follow through on the childhood boy dream of making video games was really appealing,” Saint said.
Having just recently brought on more support for their new business model, the Philly-based team has no desire to grow far beyond its current structure.
“We’re not a typical big business company and we really don’t want to be,” Stallwood said. “We love being a boutique and we love being here. We love what we’re doing and we’ll keep doing it with five people as long as we’re having a great time and if we keep doing a good job.”
The business relocated a year ago to Third and Chestnut streets but its city office and Stallwood’s and Saint’s South Philly homes are important ingredients in the mix.
“We’re not moving the company,” Saint said. “We’ve toyed with the idea, about moving to San Francisco … and the community there. We’re talking about games — AAA titles, like ‘Madden’ and ‘Halo’ and ‘Call of Duty,’ But Philly is a much smaller indy scene, with cool projects and creative, innovative things happening.” SPR
Contact the South Philly Review at editor@southphillyreview.com.
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